Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for November, 2009
November 19, 2009 at 6:49 am · Filed under Lobbying
If your idea of space advocacy can’t be contained to 140-character tweets, you’re in luck: a couple of organizations have set plans for grassroots lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill early next year. The Space Exploration Alliance has announced plans for its 2010 Legislative Blitz, scheduled for February 21-23. (Some of the language on the web site, though, still refers to their 2009 event.) The exact legislative agenda isn’t listed, although the site does refer to the Augustine committee report and the need to increase NASA’s funding.
ProSpace has also set a date for its March Storm 2010: February 28-March 2. Preliminary agenda items will be posted in the near future. No word, though, on the state of the controversy between ProSpace and the Space Frontier Foundation, which announced plans last week for its own March Storm event.
November 19, 2009 at 6:40 am · Filed under Lobbying
It seems some NASA supporters took the news about a potential across-the-board budget cut in FY2011 (which may or may not happen, and may or may not include NASA) pretty hard: on the microblogging service Twitter, the news generated a flurry of tweets in the last day or so, all tagged with the search term “#saveNASA”. While it’s not clear just in how much jeopardy NASA’s budget is, it hasn’t stopped people from rallying that something needs to be done to, well, save NASA.
What that something is isn’t clear: most of the tweets are actually “retweeting” other posts, most of which cite the technological spinoffs created by NASA (good if you’re trying to justify technology development, not as effective if you’re trying to save human spaceflight). An example: “If you don’t think we should #SaveNASA, please throw away ur pacemaker, dialysis machine, cancer detection technology, cell phone, etc. Thx!” Then there are the electoral threats: “Dear Obama. I voted for you. I in fact managed to get my whole family to vote for you (amazing!) Now is your time to keep my vote. #SaveNASA”
What these “space tweeps” plan to do to convince the White House to save NASA isn’t clear yet. One person has created a social networking site whose stated goal is to “convince the Obama Administration to maintain NASA’s funding” (wait, what about that $3-billion-a-year increase space advocates had been supporting?), but other than that there’s no focus, nor any reason why this should exist rather than joining existing groups and efforts. Perhaps the plan is to inundate the White House with pro-NASA tweets: after all, @BarackObama is big on Twitter. (What’s that, you say, President Obama says he’s never used Twitter? Time for a #planB.)
November 18, 2009 at 1:15 pm · Filed under Lobbying
In late September Save Space kicked off its efforts to get half a million letters in support of the space program delivered to the White House by the end of October. By late October, though, that goal looked doubtful: the metrics they had provided (in terms of web traffic and Facebook fans) appeared to fall far short of what was needed to generate that many letters, and a spokesperson indicated that it would be more of an “open-ended venture”.
However, in a video posted to the web site with remarkably little fanfare (primarily just a single tweet), Space Florida president Frank DiBello claims that the effort mets its goal, and by the October 31 deadline, with a “devastating impact” in DC. “While I was in Washington two weeks ago, I had a meeting with some people in the White House who wanted to know what they could do with all the letters that they’ve got,” DiBello said in the video, dated November 10. “And their estimate is that they have some 500,000 letters in Washington, all in support of the space program. And they have an issue for security – they can’t deliver them to the White House – but believe me, the White House knows that they’re there.”
Without more supporting information, though, it’s difficult to accept this. The Save Space campaign started on September 28, while DiBello’s meeting, if his timing is correct, would have been the week of October 26, just four weeks later. For Save Space to have met its 500,000-letter goal it would need to generate an average of 125,000 letters a week. That’s about twice what the White House receives per week overall, as POLITICO noted last month. That sort of volume would probably overwhelm the people charged with reviewing them (indeed, there was a backlog of 25,000 letters noted in the POLITICO article), making it difficult for them to ascertain they’re “all in support of the space program”. I’ve put in a request with the Save Space people to confirm this information and clarify what the status of this letter-writing campaign is.
November 18, 2009 at 7:06 am · Filed under Other
After Tuesday’s meeting between Presidents Obama and Hu, the two countries issued a joint statement covering a wide range of issues, including one paragraph about space issues:
The United States and China look forward to expanding discussions on space science cooperation and starting a dialogue on human space flight and space exploration, based on the principles of transparency, reciprocity and mutual benefit. Both sides welcome reciprocal visits of the NASA Administrator and the appropriate Chinese counterpart in 2010.
Space also merited one sentence later, on security issues: “The two sides believed that the two countries have common interests in promoting the peaceful use of outer space and agree to take steps to enhance security in outer space.”
The former passage sounds similar to efforts in the last several years to start to develop greater cooperation between the two countries in space, including a 2006 visit to China by then-administrator Mike Griffin. Those cooperative efforts were hindered by the January 2007 Chinese ASAT test, which leads to the latter passage, although it’s not clear what might be involved in steps to “enhance security” in space.
November 17, 2009 at 7:05 am · Filed under Congress
An intriguing hearing has popped up on the schedule of the aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee: “Commercial Space Transportation”. No other details about the hearing are listed, other than the date (December 2, 10 am).
The overall T&I committee is chaired by James Oberstar (D-MN), best known in space circles for his opposition five years ago to the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act. When Oberstar’s name entered circulation a year ago as a potential Secretary of Transportation, I noted at the time that space had not been a priority for him for several years, since an abortive effort in early 2005 to roll back some of the provisions of the CSLAA. What’s triggered this hearing, and how involved Oberstar is with it, isn’t certain. I’ve heard from one source that the hearing will focus on a 2006 GAO report on commercial space transportation commissioned by Oberstar, although that report largely supported the FAA’s existing work on regulating commercial space transportation.
November 17, 2009 at 6:57 am · Filed under Congress
The House Science and Technology Committee has released the list of witnesses for Thursday’s hearing on “The Growth of Global Space Capabilities”:
- Marty Hauser, Vice President, Washington Operations & Research and Analysis, The Space Foundation
- J.P. Stevens, Vice President, Space Systems, Aerospace Industries Association
- Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
- Kai-Uwe Schrogl, Director, European Space Policy Institute
- Ray A. Williamson, Executive Director, Secure World Foundation
Speaking Saturday at the SpaceVision 2009 conference in Tucson, Arizona, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, chair of the space subcommittee, said her committee was planning a series of three hearings on space issues through the end of the year “where we’re going to try and really drive home the importance of our human spaceflight program to our country.” This hearing is the first of three: the other two, she said after her talk, will deal with safety (comparing Ares/Orion with commercial systems) and jobs. She added that the committee would wait until at least January before starting work in earnest on a new NASA authorization bill, depending on when the White House announces its decision on human space exploration policy, and what that decision is.
Giffords, while supporting President Obama and the White House on general issues, expressed concern that he isn’t necessarily getting the best advice. “I feel very confident that NASA is important to the president,” she said, but also noted, “I think he’s doing a great job, but has not necessarily surrounded himself with people really close to him in his inner circle who are space people.”
November 17, 2009 at 6:36 am · Filed under NASA, White House
Space advocates have talked for a long time about winning a substantial budget increase for NASA. That talk has been emboldened in the last few months by the Augustine committee, whose report found that an increase of up to $3 billion a year was “more appropriate” to support human space exploration beyond LEO. Even people who disagree with some of the options and other findings in the report have seized upon this as something of a necessity for NASA.
There’s just one problem: NASA’s budget—as well as other domestic spending—might get slashed in the FY2011 budget request. The AP reported late last week that the White House was weighing a spending freeze or cuts of up five percent for non-military agencies, as part of an effort to decrease the budget deficit. An Orlando Sentinel article suggests it might even be worse: NASA has been told to prepare for as much as a ten-percent cut.
Keep in mind, though, that while agencies have been told to plan for cuts of up to five or ten percent, that doesn’t mean that all agencies will be subject to the same cuts. “When the president makes a decision on human spaceflight, he can ignore that,” an unidentified “senior administration official” told the Sentinel. The question will be how much of a priority human space exploration will be for the White House when it decides how much to cut—or increase—NASA’s budget.
November 16, 2009 at 8:34 pm · Filed under Congress, Other
On Thursday Time magazine released its annual “best inventions” list. Topping the list as the best invention of the year, in the minds of the magazine’s staff, were NASA’s Ares rocket, dubbing the Ares 1 “a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we’d never considered before”. Nitpickers would note that the Ares 1 could not qualify as the “smartest and coolest thing built in 2009″ since the full-fledged Ares 1 is still in the design stage: only a suborbital prototype, the Ares 1-X, was built and flown this year.
That did not stop the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, Bart Gordon, and the chair of the space subcommittee, Gabrielle Giffords, from praising Time’s selection in a press release today. “This recognition by TIME is further proof that in spite of a challenging budgetary environment, NASA continues to demonstrate technological leadership,” Gordon said in the statement. “I’d like to congratulate NASA and all of the people who have worked on the development of the Ares rockets.”
Coming from the opposite direction, though, was the Space Frontier Foundation, who sharply criticized the selection in its own press release today. Foundation co-founder Rick Tumlinson called the award a “publicity hoax”, saying, “There was no boy in the balloon and there most definitely was no Ares rocket launched in Florida last month.”
While Time might have considered Ares the invention of the year, it’s not a sentiment shared by its readers, who have the option online of rating the importance of each of the 50 inventions profiled on a 1-to-100 scale. Ares comes in tied for 13th place (as of early Monday evening), with an average rating of 72. That puts it well behind the frontrunner, an electronic eye to allow the blind to see, a low-power but bright lightbulb, and a roof shingle/solar panel. Ares, though, is doing much better than another top-50 invention, the no-punt offense, whose standing probably plummeted (in New England, at least) after Sunday night’s Pats-Colts game.
November 14, 2009 at 10:01 am · Filed under Congress
One of the more prominent space supporters in the Senate won’t be leaving as soon as previously planned. As both the Washington Post and The Hill report, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) plans to remain in the Senate at least through the Texas gubernatorial primary next March. Hutchison, who is running for governor against incumbent Rick Perry, had previously said she should resign in the fall to devote herself full-time to the campaign. Hutchison is the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, with oversight of NASA.
November 13, 2009 at 1:10 pm · Filed under Lobbying
After the Space Frontier Foundation announced yesterday that it planned to revive the citizen space lobbying effort March Storm in 2010, I was curious what the response of ProSpace, who had run the event for most of its history, might be. I got the following press release earlier today from ProSpace executive director Winn Phillips (who I see has also commented on the previous post on this topic):
After a premature announcement of his demise, Mark Twain famously observed that “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
This past week, The Space Frontier Foundation committed a similar mistake, releasing a statement that erroneously contended our annual March Storm event was allowed to “fade away”.
Nothing could be further from the truth. ProSpace is an organization that is moving forward with strength and vision. And our trademark event, March Storm, remains the single most respected space activist event in Washington.
ProSpace did make an operational decision not to hold the event in 2009. In consultation with members of the House and Senate, the Obama administration and our membership, we determined that the singular focus on the dire state of the economy would obscure our message. Other organizations made other determinations, but the leadership of ProSpace stands by our decision and knows it to be the right one.
The success of our fourteen previous March Storm events is evident and a source of pride for our members. The leading indicator of that success is the fact that a number of other organizations decided to follow our lead and hold similar events in the same time frame as ProSpace.
We have always encouraged those other space groups to come to Washington to advance their organizational agendas and likewise applaud the proposed efforts of the Space Frontier Foundation. Our singular requirement is that they create an original name and identity for their event that does not imply the endorsement of ProSpace.
March Storm will remain the trademark event for ProSpace. We will be announcing our plan for 2010 shortly. It is an exciting time and we promise an exciting March Storm. Join us!
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